Friday, September 21, 2012

Movie Review: Dredd 3D

In an industry dominated by a
glut of remakes, reboots, sequels, prequels and spiritual successors, the
rehash of Judge Dredd seemed like a
very bad idea on paper. Add in the 3D and the lopsided grin first look of the
film and it seemed like a disaster in the making. Surprisingly, Dredd 3D defies all kinds of expectations
to blast through its 90 minutes and even makes us long for a sequel.

Dredd works so well mostly because it is written by Alex Garland,
who is slowly approaching the geekdom levels of Joss Whedon - he wrote the cult
hit novel The Beach (which was
bastardized by Hollywood) and also the movies Sunshine, 28 days later and Never
let me go. Garland and director Pete Travis bring back the gritty violence
and the deadpan humor found in the Judge
Dredd comics, a far cry from the horribly cartoonish 1995 Sylvester
Stallone movie.

We’re
introduced to a sort-of-post-apocalyptic-dystopian-futuristic New York City
where tens of thousands of crimes occur every single day. To keep things under
control are Judges – Robocop style law enforcement officers with cool
motorbikes and handheld guns. Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is handed the task of
evaluating a rookie (Olivia Thirlby) and he takes her to a high rise building
crime scene where a couple of guys were skinned alive and tossed from an
unknown floor balcony. The routine investigation turns into a nightmare as the
building locks down and a drug lord sends out a horde of gangsters to shoot
down the two cops. Dredd is left to blast his way through the various floors,
with only his trusty voice-commanded handgun at his disposal.

The premise
sounds a bit like The Raid Redemption but
know that Garland began work on the movie much before that film was made.
Comparisons to the Indonesian film are inevitable and it’s easy to dismiss Dredd for its lack of Silat martial
arts, however there are enough bullets and droolworthy slow-mo gunplay to
compensate. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle’s expressionist super slow-mo 3D
camera gives an effect that can best be described as a splash of ice cold soda
on your face. All the coolness is contrasted by the mega hot (in a slightly
disgusting way) Lena Heady as Mama the psychotic drug lord who makes you forget
about Thirlby’s clichéd, irritating video game side character.

Naturally the
best thing about Dredd 3D is its
constrained single location, and it makes the film a hell of a lot more
exciting than most of the big CGI overloaded Michael Bay cringefests. Karl
Urban never takes off his helmet but is still more expressive than 99 percent
of the actors out there – it helps that he hurls one liners with the clanging
deadpan style of Munnabhai Sanjay Dutt. A lot of the humor in ­Dredd seems self-referential, in one
scene a goon talks about cops in the city being like meat grinders, which may
or may not allude to the way reboots are made nowadays to pave a ways for a
franchise. If a sequel is indeed made, I’ll be the first in line to watch it.